


A Dream Worth Keeping

by trulywicked



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Changelings, Creature Stiles, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Magic, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Violence, fuzzy aging, temporal disonance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-12 04:44:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trulywicked/pseuds/trulywicked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles goes to the Nematon to figure out what the source of his black outs and odd behavior is and remembers something he buried a long time ago. Now he digs it up so he can stop the nogitsune from hurting his loved ones, and if he gets a little revenge in at the same time he's not going to complain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Started before 2/10/2014 so this won't line up with the most recent Teen Wolf Episodes. Also I take faerie lore and twist it to suit my purposes. I do KNOW the proper lore but have shifted it to work for the fic and borrowed the way changelings work from an Emma Holly book called Fairyville, I HIGHLY recommend the book by the way.

He couldn’t keep doing this. He just _couldn’t_. He was terrified that he’d hurt his friends, that he’d kill someone he loved. He couldn’t keep letting this pass and hope for the best.  
  
So he’d do something about it.  
  
It was easy to sneak out of the McCall house. Melissa thought he was asleep and Scott was out doing his alpha thing, trying to figure out what was going on by helping Kira. Stiles really hoped that wouldn’t come back to bite them in the ass. He sort of liked Kira. She was a little awkward, super smart, and he could totally be research bros with her if she wound up being all she seemed and not one of the bad guys.  
  
He shivered in the damp chill of the night air. Probably should have brought a jacket but he just wanted this over with. However it turned out. His sneakers crunched lightly on the leaves as he trekked through the trees to the source of it all, the Nematon. His dreams centered around it, this mess all started with it, hell _Derek’s_ mess was rooted, ha ha, at the Nematon. So it was to the Nematon he went.  
  
Unfortunately he hadn’t gone undetected and as soon as he stepped into the clearing around the stump fireflies swarmed then coalesced into the oni who’d been creeping on them lately and then he was surrounded.  
  
“Aw man come on. I am not possessed by some weirdass evil fox thing,” he flailed, “Kitsune can’t touch mountain ash, just like the other furry canid people in my life and I’ve got it lining my window now. I looked this up!” He started looking around for an escape, finding none.  
  
One of the oni reached out, hand going for his neck, and Stiles started stumbling back. He did not want to die like this thank you _very_ much. He couldn’t go too far back though because Oni 1 had numbers 2 and 3 behind him, “Look can’t we talk about this, you guys can maybe help me figure out what’s _really_ going on with me and,” the oni’s hand shot out and caught the back of his neck even as Stiles was winding himself up to try and punch it. As soon as the gloved hand made contact with his skin it was like being plunged into ice and a film of memory shuttered down over his eyes.  
  
His Mom, laying in her hospital bed thrashing and struggling against two oni while a third tried to block him from seeing, tried to distract him with something and then-  
  
Stiles gasped as the vision ended, an angry roar filling the clearing as the oni’s hand was ripped away from him. He blinked rapidly as a blue eyed leather clad blur attacked the oni, who dissipated into fireflies and disappeared again. “Jesus.” There had to be something wrong with him when you considered that being faced with a shifted and pissed off werewolf made him feel _relieved_.  
  
“Goddamn it Stiles. this is taking sleepwalking too far.”  
  
Stiles snorted, “For your information Sourwolf, I am not sleepwalking. For once.”  
  
“Oh well then, _what the hell were you thinking?_ ” Derek got in Stiles face and pressed him back against a tree. He didn’t slam him against it as he might have once done but pinning Stiles, who never had the good sense to back down and submit, was a natural reaction of his wolf to the skewed hierarchy.  
  
“I was _thinking_ that I’m sick of sleepwalking. I sick of nightmares. I’m sick of not being able to tell if I’m awake or asleep. And I’m sick of being afraid that I’m going to hurt my friends!” He glared at Derek. “I’m not possessed but there is _something_ wrong with me and I need to find out what.” He started pushing back, nothing against werewolf strength, “So if you’re not going to help me do that then fuck off!”  
  
“How the hell are you planning to find out?”  
  
Stiles pointed at the stump, “That. It’s where this all started, it’s got to be where it ends. You may not trust me-”  
  
“I do,” Derek interrupted, embarrassment creeping in as his eyes faded back to green and his shift bled away, “I do trust you Stiles.” It was the first time he’d admitted it since Stiles had won his trust.  
  
“Then help me. Let me do what I need to.”  
  
“If you get hurt-”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll wallow in guilt until the end of your days,” Stiles rolled his eyes.  
  
“I was going to say I’d let them hold the wake in the loft.”  
  
“Asshole,” but Stiles was fighting a smile now as he shoved at Derek’s shoulder, “Get off.”  
  
Derek stepped back, “What exactly do you have planned?”  
  
“Er...touch it?” he saw the pained and exasperated look crawl over Derek’s face, “Well I don’t really have an expert on Nematon physics I trust Derek, I’m winging it.”  
  
“You haven’t asked Deaton?”  
  
“I don’t _trust_ Deaton. He keeps the most important information to himself until it’s practically too late to utilize it and even without that he is shady. Do _you_ trust him?”  
  
“No. I want to but no.”  
  
“There you go then,” Stiles stepped up to the Nematon and brushed his fingers over the top of the stump. He could feel the energy, mostly corrupted, sick in a manner of speaking, thrumming inside it. It made him feel a little ill actually. His pinky caught the edge of the crack in the stump and he went numb, his vision changing yet again.  
  
He was standing in darkness, a blank void, facing himself. Or it looked like him...mostly. He was pretty sure his skin and hair didn’t sparkle like it was coated in silver dust and that his ears didn’t look like a Rivendell extra’s and his eyes definitely didn’t look like solid gold. “Who are you?”  
  
It laughed, and just like it looked like him but not, it sounded the same way. It had his voice but it was richer, had an undercurrent of power, “I’m _you_ idiot.”  
  
He shook his head, “You are _not_ me. I’m not...whatever the hell you are.”  
  
It sighed as if disappointed, “I’m the part of you that you locked away along with your memories of Mom’s death. I’m the part you need to control and fully use our spark. I am belief and magic and in your very blood. You’ve spent years fooling yourself into being human, into acting human. But you’re not and never have been Grimucywn.”  
  
He took a step back, heart beating too fast, denial choking in the back of his throat.  
  
“Running away again? I thought you were scared for your little stitched together family.”  
  
He froze, “What _are_ you?”  
  
“You _know_ what I am, you know what _you_ are. You’ve only chosen to ignore it, so desperate for a ‘normal’ existence without magic and kitsune and oni. Yet here you are, even trying so hard to be a human norm you’ve come right back here. And I can’t be held back anymore. _You_ opened the door you had closed between us and it can’t be locked again. I’m all power and magic without conscience. I want the same as you, to keep Scott and Dad and Derek safe, but I don’t have those thin lines you cling to, those _morals_ you developed living among the normal humans.” It tsked, “Three people alone are safe from me so long as you keep us separated. How many lives are you willing to risk in exchange for willful ignorance?”  
  
Memories flashed in front of him again, to the tune of its laughter, “I don’t want this. I don’t want to be this.”  
  
“You _are_ what you _are_ what you always have been. Wanting different doesn’t change the facts _Stiles_.” It was a mockery of his chosen name. “And now it only hurts what you want to protect. You aren’t possessed by the nogitsune but consider who else might be? Who else was touched by the darkness of the dying portal?”  
  
 _‘Allison.’_ The bottom dropped out of Stiles’ stomach. Allison was the only one of the three of them who hadn’t been tested yet. “I-”  
  
“You have the power to save them, to bring the nogitsune out into its own form. To claim vengeance for Mom.” Now that powerful voice rang with anger, “The oni showed you, you saw, you know. Will you let it claim another of our people? Dad? Scott? _Derek?_ ”  
  
A violent rejection of the mere suggestion flooded through him and the black void became white, light filling the entire area and revealing shadows and hints of things he’d hidden away from himself.  
  
“Well _finally_. Do I get to come home now?” Other-him held a shimmery hand out in supplication.  
  
He stared at it and muttered, “I can’t believe I sparkle like a freaking Twilight vampire. I am never going to hear the end of this.”  
  
A laugh echoed.  
  
 _“Stiles!”_  
  
Other-him grinned, “Our wolf is calling. Better go.”

Stiles sighed and gripped the other’s hand, pulling it into himself and shivering as he was filled with light and heat, his spark igniting into a blaze.


	2. Chapter 2

He opened his eyes and saw Derek crouched in front of him, frowning. “I’m fine Sourwolf.”

“Your scent changed. It’s still yours but stronger,” heavy brows knit together.

“Like Stiles squared, yeah figured.” He looked at the crack of the nematon, felt the dying energy, and knew he couldn’t help Allison, couldn’t use the power he’d neglected for so long without training and practice. “If I told you I’ve never really been human, would you believe me?”

Derek’s eyes went blue, his nostrils flared, “Stiles what-”

“I locked it away when my Mom died. I thought it would keep Dad safe, would keep me safe.” He met the wolf eyes, “I tried to be human but-”

“You’re not,” Derek finished. It was still Stiles in front of him, still the boy he knew. Wolf and man both scented it, felt it. It was Stiles but it was like there was more of him than before. “What are you then?”

“Plentyn a neidiwyd am arall.” The Welsh rolled off his tongue smoothly. It had been years since he’d spoken his mother’s tongue but it still came naturally. At the raised eyebrow he laughed softly, “Changeling. There’s a human like me living with the fae that would have been deathly ill as an infant. It’s a trade, some fae trade their child for a human babe on the edge of death. The human mother agrees in a dream and there’s some DNA mojo so I’m still...I am my Mom and Dad’s son biologically. I just also have fae parents. Mom and Dad got a healthy baby boy and two fae healed and got to raise a human child, widening the fae gene pool. It’s a little complicated.”

Derek shook his head, “Not as complicated as you think. There were folk tales my grandparents told us when we were young. So you...what, your other side was acting out?”

“Basically,” Stiles took one of Derek’s hands and pressed on a finger, making a claw pop out. He wiggled and picked until the outer sheath slid off, leaving a sharper claw behind, “I need to go. To cross into the fae realm for a little while.” He held Derek’s stare, “A day here is a year there. I need training, I need to learn how to use my magic, to control my powers.”

Derek gripped Stiles’ wrist, “You’re coming back.” It was a demand.

Stiles nodded slowly, “It’ll be a trade again, for a short time. My ‘brother’ will come here while I go there to train. I need...may I keep this?” He held up the claw sheath.

“Why?” Derek asked in confusion.

“A connection. Something to draw me back,” the corner of his mouth kicked up in slight amusement, “An anchor in werewolf terms.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m hilarious and you know it.”

“Yes,” Derek was baffled that Stiles would choose him as an anchor but honored as well, “Yes keep it.”

“Thanks. Um...give the human the low down and have Scott look after him?” Stiles shifted nervously.

“Okay. How long? Scott will ask,” Derek needed to know for himself but he wasn’t far enough gone to admit that.

“Three days max.” Stiles scooted away and reached for the crack in the stump again, pushing his fingers into the gap.

Derek sucked in a sharp breath as Stiles disappeared, his wolf howling and going wild inside his skin, demanding he follow him. He almost did but then another Stiles shimmered into being, an older, fully adult Stiles and Derek’s mind ground to a halt, even the wolf stilling in confusion.

It wasn’t really Stiles, Derek knew that. The man didn’t smell like Stiles or move like him, or have that air of bone deep hidden power. But God he looked so much like Stiles was certain to when he got older. It made the thoughts Derek kept carefully buried spring to life like BBC Sherlock fans after a two year hiatus.

Not-Stiles smiled and Derek could hear a funeral march playing in the back of his head because while it wasn’t a certified Stiles beam it was close enough that his heart gave a leap.

“So apparently my Other’s life has grown a bit complicated,” Not-Stiles said in a voice that was fully matured and entirely bad for Derek’s peace of mind, “My name is Selgwyn.”

He offered his hand, smooth and composed and that got Derek out of his stupor because Stiles would never offer his hand like that no matter how mature he got. Derek knew Stiles would always dive eagerly in head first or hold back resulting in rushes and starts. It helped him separate this man from Stiles. “Derek,” he shook the offered hand, “I’ll bring you to the current local alpha, Stiles’ best friend.”

An amused light made eerily familiar yet not eyes shine, “This should be an entertaining introduction to say the least.”

\-------------------------------------------

It was certainly something, mainly yelling and Scott freaking out and growling at Derek for letting Stiles do something so reckless before Selgwyn made it clear that staying separate from his true nature did far more damage to Stiles’ health and sanity than anything else. Once Scott had calmed down and was asking questions, Derek slipped out, gathering up a few things he’d need, and went back to the Nematon to wait.

It was probably pathetic but he needed to be here when Stiles came back. He needed to be the first person to see him come back. He didn’t feel a pack connection to Scott, though he did respect and even usually like the teenage alpha, no longer felt that connection to Isaac because it was blocked from Isaac’s end, Cora had returned to the pack that had taken her in when she’d escaped, and Peter...was best left unthought about. Stiles on the other hand did feel like pack. There was a connection between them, one that even all of his stupidity with the Alpha Pack crisis hadn’t been able to so much as shake.

He could scent Stiles’ emotional state and health from across the room or with a minor trace left on an object. He always just knew when Stiles was in danger and he could pick out his heartbeat from outside a rave in full swing. Stiles was pack and Derek couldn’t do anything but wait for the only solid and strong pack connection he really had to come back.

He wasn’t exactly surprised when he heard Scott’s footsteps approaching the next day and he didn’t bother to look up from the piece of car engine he was working with to pass the time as he said, “You still need to work on your stealth.”

“Well I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you,” Scott sat down next to him on the stump and waited.

The silence was comfortable and Derek liked it but he also wasn’t in the mood for company so it didn’t take long for him to crack, “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry for exploding at you. I know better than anyone that Stiles always does what he wants, it wasn’t fair of me to blame you for him being himself.”

Derek grunted an acknowledgement of Scott’s apology and listened to the rustle of leaves as Scott toed at the ground for a few minutes.

“So....changelings. Faeries seriously?” It was aggrieved.

“It’s rare for them to bother with our world. Most that do stick with just a little harmless mischief or they actually help, like brownies.” Derek pried a broken part out of the bit he was fiddling with and set it aside.

“And my best friend is a changeling...what’s different about a changeling?”

“Ask Selgwyn, I’ve never known one before,” Derek grumbled.

“I don’t know him. Besides it’s...weird. He’s wearing Stiles’ face,” it was said with a pout.

Because Derek understood he just sighed and set the engine part down, “I don’t really know. All I have a folk tales that conflict with each other. If you don’t want to ask Selgwyn then you’re going to have to wait for Stiles to come back and ask him instead.”

“Crap,” Scott rubbed a hand over his face, “You shouldn’t stay out here with everything that’s going on.”

Derek just gave him a look that clearly broadcasted the fact that he wasn’t leaving.

“Jeeze, fine. Suit yourself bonehead. You know, if you don’t make a move once Stiles is legal I’m going to rat you out,” Scott got up and left before Derek could growl out a denial or just growl.

‘Smug little shit.’ Derek glared at Scott’s vapor trail and went back to fixing the cart part and waiting.

\----------------------------------------

The three day mark arrived and found Derek pacing back and forth in front of the stump when Selgwyn arrived. He barely gave him a glance despite the chuckle of Stiles’ doppleganger. He was more focused on the crack Stiles had disappeared into. He stared at it, willing Stiles to return, his wolf pacing even more frantically in his chest.

A minute before midnight the crack began glowing and Selgwyn stepped up onto the stump, “Well that’s my cue,” the man studied Derek, and the glare he was leveling on him for stalling, and smiled, “My Other is a very lucky man.”

Derek didn’t have time to suss out his meaning before the man was stepping onto the crack and disappearing. Derek scented the air, magic ripe in it, and whispered, “Come on, where are you Stiles?”

The glow began spreading over the entire stump then Derek yelped and jumped back when the Nematon stump suddenly burst into growth and life, becoming a humongous oak tree in the space of a few seconds. He let his fangs and claws drop, heart beating in an adrenaline rush as a huge knot that looked entirely too much like a door for his peace of mind formed on the trunk in front of him. His senses jacked, the glowing portal in front of him, he was ready to either bolt or attack when Stiles stepped through.


End file.
